BlackBerry Exec: The Priv Will Not be Updated to Android Nougat

When the BlackBerry Priv was announced, it made a lot of headlines as it was the first smartphone from the company that would run Android. For the most part, it was a great first step into the market but since then the company has decided to step away from making smartphones and has started licensing their brand to other smartphone makers. This was a smartphone that was released in 2015 with Lollipop and while it did get updated to Marshmallow, it doesn’t look like it will be updated to Nougat.

Major version updates is a sore spot for the Android community. Some will say the comparison to Apple and iOS is unfair since it’s not the same software, but from an average customer’s perspective they are all just smartphones and they (by and large) will run the majority of the same applications and games they want. So when Apple pushes out big OS updates to their products for 4+ years, it tends to irk Android owners when they’re lucky to get them for 2.

This is the type of bad news we’re seeing with the BlackBerry Priv now as well. The smartphone was released in 2015 with Lollipop so many had expected it would be like other flagship smartphones and receive two major version updates. It did receive the update to Marshmallow but Alex Thurber, the GM of BlackBerry Mobility Solutions, recently confirmed that the company did not have any plans to update the device to Android 7.x Nougat.

This is actually quite interesting because BlackBerry was on the ball when it came to security updates for their devices (and they still do support it with security updates). The company prides itself in how secure their software is (even when it’s built on top of Android) and they were even able to release their software update before Google did on occasion. While things aren’t as clear for the DTEK devices from TCL, Mr. Thurber says it is unlikely since they were merely reference designs to test the new licensing model.